Thursday May 14, 2009 2:30 pm

LOST Review: The Incident, Season 5 Finale

Well, the season finale of Lost is finally here and now the wait begins for the final season next year. So what happened? A lot! But before we get to that, I would like to rate this season finale up against previous Lost season finales. I wouldn’t say it was the best out of all the season finales we’ve seen from this show. I think “Through the Looking Glass,” which was the season finale of season three, is hands down the best the show has ever done. Still this episode was very good and gave viewers a major revelation that we’ve been wondering about for some time. By the end of this episode, the question all of us will be asking is where do we go from here? How will the story continue? How much has changed? Let the speculation begin, but first a more detailed review of season five’s two-part finale “The Incident.”

Spoilers…..........................................................

One of the many questions that everyone has been asking themselves about Lost is who is Jacob? All we know is that Jacob is the true leader of the Others and everything that has to do with the Island. Why is it that no one can see Jacob? Why was Christian and Claire in Jacob’s cabin? What is the true meaning or purpose of the Island? Well, we don’t find out the answers to any of these questions in this episode, but we do finally meet Jacob. We first meet him at the beginning of the episode as we see him in a cave weaving some tapestry. Jacob leaves the cave, catches a fish, and sits down to eat his meal. He looks out to the ocean and sees an old sailing ship. My guess is that this is the ship the Black Rock whose wreckage the Losties discovered in Season 1. So if that’s the case, then this scene is taking place in the past. According to Lostpedia, the Black Rock sailed in 1845 so I guess that’s the year this takes place in.

Another man approaches Jacob and sees the ship – he’s not happy. He wonders how the ship found the Island and if Jacob brought the ship here. A disagreement occurs between Jacob and the unknown man about people and what happens to them when they come to the island. The man then discusses his desire to kill Jacob and that he will somehow find a “loophole” to do it. This scene takes place at the foot of the four-toed statue which is still intact at this moment in time and has yet to be destroyed; again it appears to be some Egyptian God. This scene is very important not only to this episode, but also in my opinion, probably to the series as a whole. More on that later.

The people on Oceanic Flight 815 are important for some reason and they were all destined to come to the island. I think we’ve always assumed that, but I think this episode solidifies that because through out the episode at various times in all of the major players lives, Jacob has been there. We flashback to when Jack was operating on his future wife Sarah and Jacob was there. At the funeral for his parents, a young Sawyer meets Jacob. As a little girl, Kate steals a lunch box, but is rescued by Jacob. So on and so on Jacob shows up in just about everyone’s life. Why? Why are they all important? I guess we’ll find out next season.

In the finale, we still have Jack trying to complete Faraday’s mission to take the Jughead H-bomb to the Swan in order to prevent the incident which sets up the chain of events which bring all of them to the island in the 2004 with the crash of Oceanic Flight 815. Sayid is able to remove the core and they carry it back to the Dharma camp. Jack and Sayid try to go by unnoticed, but are met by Roger, Ben Linus’ father. He in turn shoots Sayid in the gut for trying to kill Ben. Hurley, Jin, and Miles arrive and help Jack and Sayid escape - the head to the Swan.

As they drive to the Swan, Sayid is bleeding to death. Jack tells Hurley to hurry, but the road is blocked by Sawyer, Kate, and Juliet who have escaped the sub in order to stop Jack from blowing up the the bomb. Why is Jack doing all of this? We assumed it’s because he’s still trying to be the leader and save his people, but he tells Sawyer that it’s because he knows that he has lost Kate. I guess maybe that’s some of the pain Jack was talking about with Kate in last week’s episode. He loves her, but feels that their relationship is lost and can never be recovered. So to erase the pain, he will erase the time he has spent on the island.

Eventually everyone is willing to help Jack and as the drill is drilling into the future Swan station, Jack throws the bomb down the hole. Sayid mentioned earlier that it will detonate on impact. Unfortunately it doesn’ t and the incident that Daniel warned about happens. This was an intense moment as I was sure that was it. The bomb will explode and we would be given a preview of the new timeline before the show ended. It doesn’t explode and the electromagnetism is unleashed causing all the metal around them to be sucked down.

Juliet gets caught up by a metal chain and gets sucked in. Sawyer holds onto her, but fails to save her. A HEARTBREAKING moment here in Lost. I love the character of Juliet and have had tremendous sympathy for her because of not being able to find lasting love with either Jack or Sawyer thanks to Kate. But is this the end of Juliet? No. the final scene has her still alive at the bottom of the hole next to the bomb. Is this unbelievable? Yes. She should not have been able to survive a fall like that - especially at the speed she was going while getting sucked in. I love this show and I’m giving them a little leeway here as the final scene with a injured Juliet taking a rock and banging on the bomb cartridge until it blows up was powerful and moving. I’ll come back to this final scene in a bit because the other big storyline in this episode dealt with Jacob.

John Locke, Ben, Sun, and the Others are marching to the four-toed statue where Jacob lives. Locke enters the statue with Ben whom he wants to kill Jacob. While they are in the statue, the Others meet up with Ilana and her crew who are carrying a piece of cargo. Inside the cargo bin is…JOHN LOCKE’S DEAD BODY!!!!!! What the $%&@?!?!?!?! So who is the John Locke we’ve been seeing for the past season? It seems that the other man who wanted to kill Jacob back in 1845 has found his loophole. Somehow that “man” (Are he and Jacob men or are they something else?) has taken over John’s body and is inhabiting it. The faux John succeeds and has Ben kill Jacob and the faux John kicks Jacob into the fire. For some reason the relationship between Jacob and the faux John reminded me of God and the Devil. I know the creators of the show have said that this is not the after life and that the Losties are not all dead, but what if God and the Devil are on Earth and the Island is the center of the universe?

We know that the Devil has always wanted to defeat God. The betrayal of Jacob by his “disciple” Ben is almost Christlike paralleling Judas betraying Jesus. And the faux John kicking Jacob into the fire is reminiscent of God condemning the Devil to burn for eternity and the faux John/ The Devil is returning the favor here. I would be okay if all of this has to do with the souls of men and God vs the Devil. It makes sense after viewing this episode. At the beginning, Jacob has faith in man and the pre-faux John doesn’t. Doesn’t God always love and forgive man no matter what their sin? Also, another reason Jacob maybe God is that Richard says that the reason he is ageless is because of Jacob. Is Richard a servant of God?

Back to the end of this episode. We’ve always seen at the end of each Lost episode, the final scene and then a quick blackout with the word Lost flashed on screen. This time as Juliet detonates the bomb, instead of the fade to black we get a flash to white and the word Lost. Now that could be just because it was an explosion and the writers decided to change it because of that, but what if the white symbolizes the change that has occurred in the show. What if Jack is successful and everything has been wiped clean since the crash? What if the whiteness symbolizes that? What if the white symbolizes God aka Jacob and about how this show has been revealed to be about religion and the struggle of God vs the Devil; good vs evil?

Season Five was fantastic! So many questions answered and yet so many more questions have risen. What’s with Hurley and the guitar? When he meets up with Jacob, Hurley is left this guitar. What is it’s significance to everything? Does it have to do with Charlie whose ring we saw Sun discover when she and the Others returned to the Lost camp. The countdown to the final season of Lost is underway and all of our questions will be answered. The best show ever!